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Wells Fargo's attempt to regain trust with customers may not be helped by this claim: Days after admitting it signed 570,000 customers up for auto insurance they didn't need—leading to ruined credit scores and repossessions—the bank is now accused of targeting mom-and-pop shops in a deliberate, years-long overcharging scheme related to the processing of credit-card transactions. A former employee of Wells Fargo Merchant Services, which is 40% controlled by First Data, tells CNNMoney he was instructed to "go out and club the baby seals: mom-pop-shops that had no legal support" while working for the business between 2011 and 2013. A lawsuit claims the scheme involved getting small business owners to sign a 63-page merchant agreement that used "deceptive language" to hide "massive early termination fees."

"God would have had a hard time" escaping the contract, the former employee says. One of the plaintiffs in the suit, a business owner in North Carolina, says he was charged $500 to terminate the contract after being hit with monthly fees of $20 to $35. Those fees were the result of not meeting a minimum number of credit card transactions per month, though the account holder says Wells Fargo told him there would be no such fees. The bank has denied the claims in the suit filed in US District Court. It adds its "negotiated pricing terms are fair and were administrated appropriately." Nevertheless, a "shake-up" of Wells Fargo's board is coming, with Chairman Stephen Sanger likely to step down in the coming months, reports the Wall Street Journal.

If you didn't pull your money out of these cheating banks after they started the recession then you deserve what you get. Use local Credit Unions!

Thomas

Aug 12, 2017 2:50 PM CDT

There must be a high percentage of really evil people in the management of that bank. That is what we get for not prosecuting bankers. Of course prosecutors claim it is difficult to prosecute bankers for their crimes, like the ones that caused the recent recession, that the cases are too complex, so juries won't convict them. But they should at least indict them, even if they can't get them convicted. Let them spend a night in jail before posting bail.